William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind : the theology, medicine and politics of the brain / Elfed Huw Price.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Price, Elfed Huw, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brain--Philosophy.

Brain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 221 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London : UCL Press, 2025.

Summary:

William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind explores the historical origins and ideological valence of the conceptualisation of thought and mind as functions of the brain in early nineteenth-century Britain. Taking as its starting point the controversy provoked by Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, the book draws on archival and published texts, as well as images, to reveal overlooked parallels and connections with the concurrent rise of phrenology and the longstanding Christian mortalist tradition. It shows how the sentient brain served as a radical icon, marking a break with ancient Galenic medical models and Athanasian religious dogma, and charts how - in part through Lawrence's contributions - it was united with a biological vision that identified human exceptionality more directly with the structure and function of our brains. Elfed Huw Price's work indicates that, although Lawrence was silenced, his Lectures lived on, a contributor to the rising tide of Victorian naturalism, and part of a wider transformation of beliefs and values that swept aside the ancient politico-religious structures of the Confessional State, leaving the cerebral organ standing alongside the soul as the source of human reason and a distinguishing feature of humanity.

Contents:

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: starting point. The mind-body problem

1 The story so far: Lawrence's place in history

2 Before 'brainhood': the seat of reason and fountain of sense and motion

3 Soul sleepers and soul slayers: the Christian mortalist tradition

4 The Trinitarian nexus and the substructure of the confessional state

5 Revolution, riot and Romanticism

6 Psychifying the brain from Gall to Lawrence

7 Christian materialism on trial

8 Icon of the human: a new mark and measure of Homo Sapiens

9 The era of reform and the new cosmology

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Includes bibliographical references and index.